Debra W. Yang will be US Attorney for Southern California

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Debra W. Yang, 42, was nominated by President Bush to be
US Attorney for Southern California on March 22. Her nomination was unanimously confirmed
by the Senate on April 22. She will succeed former U.S. Attorney Alejandro N. Mayorkas, a
Democrat, who resigned last April, and John S. Gordon, an interim US attorney. Yang, a third
generation of Chinese American, was graduated from Boston College Law School in 1985. Yang
will be the first Asian American woman in the nation to assume leadership of the office. The
office, headquartered in Los Angeles with 245 lawyers, prosecutes federal crimes referred by the
FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and numerous other law enforcement agencies in a seven-county area that includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo,
Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.